PRAGUE, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Prague will host the summit
of the EU with its key business partner Canada on Wednesday, which is to be held
within the Czech EU presidency.
The EU-Canada summit will officially launch bilateral
talks on free trade which would enable the lowering of duty fees, the release of
investments and cooperation between the EU and Canada on the regulation and the
rules to determine the origin of commodities.
Both partners should gain 20 billion euros a year
from the agreement that is to be completed by 2011.
Canada with the annual trade turnover of over 70
billion euros is one of the EU's key business partners.
Moreover, the EU hopes the EU-Canada summit could be
an impulse to revive the talks on the world trade liberalization, which started
in 2001 within the World Trade Organization (WTO), but ended up in a stalemate
in the past few years.
The EU-Canada bilateral trade should also be
supported by the aviation agreement to open the airline market that
representatives of the EU and the Canadian government will sign in Prague.
The agreement is to remove the limitation of the
number of flights and the places of arrivals and departures, which may lower the
prices of air tickets. The agreement is to enable the European airlines to fly
to Canada from any destination in the EU.
The summit may highlight the problem of Czech
Romanies' exodus to Canada. The issues of Czech Romanies applying for refugee
status in Canada may be touched upon only during bilateral talks between
outgoing Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and his Canadian counterpart
Stephen Harper which are to take place ahead of the summit on Wednesday morning.